My place for sharing thoughts on my sheep, spinning, knitting, and quilting.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Halo

Halo is the "fuzziness" of a yarn. Not all yarns have halo. It all hinges on how a yarn is spun and the fiber used. Softly spun yarns with shorter fibers tend to have halo. The fibers aren't all contained by the twist and are allowed to "poke" out of the single thus creating halo. The more the yarn is handled the more halo it will have. Some spinners feel they have to brutalize a freshly plyed skein of yarn through thwacking and whacking on a hard surface in order for the yarn to "bloom", thus creating halo. I find that my yarns will bloom on their own through gentle handling. Why this small treatise on halo? As I was picking up my latest project to work on I noticed how lovely the halo was on it. Gives it a soft, almost ethereal look. Very lovely.